I futuri insegnanti d’inglese alla scuola primaria. Un’indagine sulla percezione delle competenze

In this paper we explore primary school trainee teachers’ perception of their linguistic-communicative competence in EFL and of their training as language teachers. 44 questionnaires were administered and 17 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Italian trainee teachers. The findings revealed that the respondents considered themselves only partly ready to handle pluralistic approaches for teaching in a plurilingual, multicultural and socially fluid context. In fact, while they expressed confidence in their general pedagogical nowledge, they perceived their linguistic-cultural education and training insufficient to enable them to teach English for interactional purposes. A few suggestions are put forward at the end of the paper.